As I argued in my first “Taming Capital” post, the political landscape defined by the 2018 midterms has reinvigorated the discussion of economic inequality and what we can or should do about it. The problem of inequality was a focus of the Occupy movement. It was also the core 2016 campaign message of Bernie Sanders – who just announced he is running for president in 2020. Like Warren’s wealth tax, Sanders understands that the obscene levels of economic inequality in the U.S. today cannot be countered simply by raising the minimum wage or a more progressive income tax structure. The concentration of wealth must also be addressed. And Sanders has put forth an important proposal for doing so – but also one that has a long history in the U.S.

Making the Estate Tax Real: Bernie Sanders

The really big fortune, the swollen fortune, by the mere fact of its size, acquires qualities which differentiate it in kind as well as in degree from what is possessed by men of relatively small means. Therefore, I believe in a graduated income tax on big fortunes. - Theodore Roosevelt, 1910

Over a century ago under urging from Theodore Roosevelt, Congress created the modern estate tax.[i] TR understood the need for an estate tax in terms that apply equally or even more so today: the problem of an inherited aristocracy based on private capital accumulation, arising from some combination of good fortune, innovation and, very importantly, coupled with institutional supports that allowed an individual to amass large amounts of wealth in a single generation. As TR argued, such inheritances were, for the next generation, free and unearned money. Not only were the inheritors of the next generation no more deserving of this wealth than any other citizen, TR believed that they would all too often fritter in away in lavish living – think of Paris Hilton, the $37 million dollar ranch that Bill Gates bought his daughter Jennifer because she likes to ride,[ii]etc.

​But TR's concerns went deeper. He also saw, clearly, that the intergenerational transmission of privilege was a threat to democracy and, perhaps ultimately to the very system that allowed such agglomerations to be created and then inherited. From the perspective of political economy, he was trying to insure that the dead hand of capital accumulated in the past would not smother the needs of the living for public goods and services in the future. In this respect Theodore Roosevelt, like his distant cousin FDR, was concerned with reforming capitalism.

The right has long opposed the Estate Tax (“the Death Tax”) and even now Sen. Mitch. McConnell has proposed eliminating the tax. This opposition is almost always articulated in terms of the farming family forced to sell off land to pay the tax – despite the reality that, challenged to find an example of such outcome, the American Farm Bureau (and the Geo. Bush administration) failed to do so. While the right has failed to (so far) eliminate the Estate Tax, the rates and triggers have been chipped away such that today it applies to only inheritances of more than $11 million. In 2017, only 6420 estates, 0.2% of the 2.7 million deaths in that year – owed any Estate Tax, at an average rate of 16.5%. Under the 2017 “reforms” to the tax, less than 2000 estates will likely pay any tax.[i]

Sanders proposal has two components:

lowering the trigger for the Estate Tax; and

making the rates more progressive.

Sanders proposes to apply the estate tax to inheritances of $3.5 million or more and raise the marginal rate to 77% on inheritances of more than $1 billion. His plan has, of course, been attacked by the usual coterie of right wing pundits. However, it is instructive to compare the proposed $3.5 million trigger to the rates that were in the 1916 Estate Tax legislation. The tax was levied on the value of any assets above $50,000, equivalent to approximately $1.3 million today – and the economy did not collapse.

Sanders proposal would also make the Estate Tax more progressive. The initial rate would be 45%, rising to 77% on assets above $1 billion. This is not dramatically different than the Estate Tax rates in effect from the mid-1930s to the mid-1980s when the top rate varied between 55% and 70%.

Sanders goals – and they are ones that progressives and certainly all socialists should support – are much like those of TR. Of course extreme wealth, left untaxed, creates succeeding generations of inheritors who did nothing to create the wealth except get born into the right family. But, that is, in some respects the least of the problems in a country where the 3 wealthiest individuals owning more wealth than the bottom 50% of households.[ii] The more fundamental problem of extreme wealth are its undermining of both democratic decision-making destruction of social cohesion.

There is now a large body of evidence that policies supported (opposed) by the wealthy are more likely to be enacted (defeated) by Congress than those supported (opposed) by large majorities of the citizenry. Obvious examples include a more distributive tax system and a higher minimum wage, both of which are widely supported by the public as a whole but opposed by the top income and wealth households.[iii]

However, just as destructive is the “winner-take-all” society created by the growing concentration of wealth (and income). In an everyone for themselves world, organizing for social change becomes more difficult, not just because of the mobilization of resources against change, but also because too many of the people we want to organize have trouble envisioning social, as distinct fromindividual, change.

Sanders Estate Tax, coupled with Warren’s wealth tax, would not only generate resources needed for programs such as a Green New Deal. These proposals would begin to reverse the dynamics of class power that have left much of us with less and our children with reduced life chances than in the past. In my third post on economic inequality, I’ll look at one other progressive proposal that would alter the dynamics of class in the U.S., the idea of a guaranteed job for all.

The midterms have not simply given the Democratic Party a majority in the House; they have visibly expanded the range of political discourse, the so called "Overton Window". This impact is particularly marked in terms of the issue of economic inequality. In the past few weeks, three major progressive - perhaps even socialist? - initiatives have been proposed. In chronological order, these are Elizabeth Warren's wealth tax, Bernie Sanders changes to the Estate Tax, and HR 1000, guaranteeing a job to all willing and able to work, a true "right-to-work." Each treads on what has been seen by the right as the prerogatives of capital. For those of us on the left, each raises the question of to what extent it is possible to intervene in the market allocation of wealth and income in a capitalist political economy, perhaps even altering the dynamics of capital accumulation and use the resulting revenues for social rather than private ends.

In this first post I'll look at Warren's for a wealth tax. The next two posts will analyze Sanders Estate Tax revisions and then HR 1000.

An Annual Tax on Wealth: Elizabeth Warren

Because it is unique in U.S. political discourse - and probably doomed whatever small chance she had of being the Democratic nominee for president - Warren's wealth tax proposal could be considered the most radical of the three. The idea behind the proposal is conceptually simple: she calls for an annual tax on wealth with two rates: 2% on household wealth over $50 million and less than $1 billion and 3% on wealth over $1 billion.[1] This is an unprecedented proposal for a nationally known political figure, because it places wealth, rather than income, at the center of the problem of extreme and growing inequality in the U.S.[2]

There are several things to like about Warren's proposal.

​(1) First, it includes all wealth; there are no loopholes, a frequent flaw in wealth taxes found in other countries. Households subject to the tax would pay their 2 or 3 percent on their invested capital such as stocks, bonds, and private business holdings and also on their non-productive capital such as yachts and $100 million penthouses in NYC. This would likely reduce the rate of private capital accumulation; however, since evidence suggests that the rate of return to high wealth holders exceeds that for most investors, large fortunes could continue to grow, although more slowly, and investments continue to be made. I'll return to the question of how to significantly reduce the largest aggregations of wealth once in lifetime in my discussion of Sanders Estate Tax proposals.

(2) One obvious and important benefit from Warren's wealth tax is the impact it would have on economic inequality. The wealth share of the top 0.1% has tripled since 1978, from about 7% to 22%. Increased concentration of wealth in turn drives the growth of income inequality. Seeking to address income inequality through progressive taxation alone is Sisyphean labor: we try to meliorate some of the worst aspects of gross inequality by setting higher tax rates but the underlying wealth dynamic recreates the extreme income inequality. This is especially marked at the top since, as Thomas Piketty argued, the returns to wealth, particularly large aggregations of wealth, have been higher than the overall growth of the economy.[1]

(3) Warren's wealth tax is also interesting from the perspective of the racial economic inequality. While the median white/African-American family income gap is 1.4:1 and the white/Latinx is 1.7:1, the wealth gaps are 40: 1 and 22:1, respectively.[2] The racial wealth gap is much more resistant to tax, minimum wage and other progressive economic policies than is the racial income gap.

(4) Estimates for the revenue raised are in the range of 1% of US GDP, or $200 - $250 billion - annually.[3] About 75,000 households, less than 0.1% of the U.S. total, would be subject to the tax. These households would end up with a tax incidence of about 4.3% on their total wealth rather than the current 3.2%; this still leaves them under taxed in comparison with the 7.5% tax rate on total wealth for the population at large.

(5) Finally, Warren’s proposal, like the property tax, is an annual levy, unlike the Estate Tax spearheaded by TDR. An annual wealth tax would establish the idea that “private” capital can be taken for public purposes. It is this "invasion" of the prerogatives of capital that has provoked squeals of outrage from billionaires across the board, from the Koch brothers to Michael Bloomberg. It is also embodies Warren's argument that entrepreneurial success is not the result simply of individual talent and ability but is in large part the outcome of social institutions, from the educational system to the rules governing property. Thus all of us should share in that success - her wealth tax would be a significant step in that direction.

[1]I'm not going to discuss the question of whether a more graduated set of rates would be preferable. This is an essay on the concepts rather than the specifics of the proposals.[1]In 2000, Donald Trump proposed a one-time tax on wealth holdings of over $10 million to pay down the federal debt. One could perhaps also point to Upton Sinclair's EPIC campaign (1934) since part of the program was to take over idle factories and land if the owner failed to pay taxes.

[1]Whatever the theoretical merits of Piketty's argument that the relative rates of growth of wealth vs the economy is a long term economic law, it is an accurate empirical description of what has happened in recent decades in the U.S.

North Star welcomes DSA’s new caucus, Socialist Majority. We agree with you on many issues and look forward to working with you to discover new strengths and then build a diverse, democratic, DSA. Yours in Solidarity,DSA North StarThe caucus for Socialism and Democracyhttps://www.dsanorthstar.org]]>Sat, 26 Jan 2019 23:17:47 GMThttp://www.dsanorthstar.org/blog/standing-up-for-congresswoman-alexandria-ocasio-cortezAlexandria Ocasio-Cortez

AOC’s Achievement: Making Americans’ Progressive Beliefs Politically Acceptable. Of all the reasons that Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is driving the right crazy, one of the most important is this: She’s advancing presumably radical ideas (by the right’s standards, anyway) that actually have massive public support.Green New Deal? Fuzzy though its meanings may be, it brings together regional development policies for the huge region of the country that private capital has long since abandoned, climate change policies in a nation where climate-change apprehension is at an all-time high, full employment and decent wage policies for a nation where even voters in Republican states are casting ballots for higher wages and better jobs. Before AOC, whose radar was a Green New Deal even on? Since she joined the protestors in Nancy Pelosi’s office, a far-flung majority of Americans now see it as a way to address all manner of problems.Likewise with taxing the rich. When AOC made the case for a 70 percent tax rate on annual income over the $10 million threshold, CNN’s Anderson Cooper responded as if she’d just called for collective farms. Now that Senator Elizabeth Warren is proposing a wealth tax that would compel the rich to pay an even fairer share of their bounty to support the common good, pundits are beginning to notice that the public has been supporting much higher taxes on the rich for a very long time. Since 2003, Gallup has annually asked the public whether they believe the level of taxes the rich pay is too high, too low or just right. The percentage saying “too low” has been in the 60-percent-to-70-percent range every year.So it’s not hard to see why AOC is driving the right crazy. Forget the dancing, not to mention the racism and sexism that underpins many of the right’s complaints. It’s that she’s giving voice to progressive ideas that the public actually supports but that have long gone unvoiced by nearly everyone in power who has a megaphone they could use. She’s game-changingly brilliant at promoting progressive public policy. To the right, if I may steal from the Bard, such women are dangerous. ~HAROLD MEYERSON

If there is a heaven, and it reserves a place for virtuous skeptics, I imagine the late Michael Harrington looking down with celestial satisfaction at the recent growth of Democratic Socialists of America, having played such an essential role in its founding 35 years before.Harrington, who would have turned 90 in February 2018 but who died too young at age 61, was born in St. Louis and moved to New York City in 1949 to become a writer. In 1951, he began a life-long commitment to radical politics when he joined Dorothy Day’s anarchist-pacifist Catholic Worker movement.Mike soon shed his anarchism as well as his parents’ Catholicism, and in 1952 left Day’s community for the Young People’s Socialist League (YPSL), youth affiliate of the battered remnant of the Socialist Party (SP). YPSL counted 134 members nationwide that year. And it was about to get smaller, because Mike joined a faction that split away to form an even fringier group, the Young Socialist League (YSL), whose adult mentor, Max Shachtman, had a long history of radical in-fighting. In the late 1950s, the Shachtmanites rejoined the SP. As newly appointed YPSL national organizer, Mike hitch-hiked across the country, visiting campuses from Brandeis to Berkeley to recruit young socialists (among those who joined in those days was an undergraduate at the University of Chicago named Bernie Sanders). Tom Hayden and other campus activists, in the process of creating Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), were among those Harrington influenced. Mike famously wound up quarreling with Hayden and other SDSers at their founding convention in Port Huron, Michigan, in 1962, over some serious issues (the Cold War, the Soviet Union, anticommunism), but also over unspoken generational tensions. It was a rift he later deeply regretted.In the mid-1960s, following the publication of his book The Other America, Mike became famous as “the man who discovered poverty.” He was invited to take part in planning sessions for President Lyndon B. Johnson’s War on Poverty in 1964 and advised Martin Luther King Jr. on the civil rights leader’s plans for a Poor People’s Campaign in 1968. Like King, Mike wrestled with the political and moral dilemma posed by LBJ’s escalation of the Vietnam War, reluctant to sever ties with an administration that, domestically, had been so committed to a progressive agenda. King’s breaking point came in 1967, when he publicly denounced and marched against the war. Mike, for complicated reasons including ties to the comrades of his youth, the increasingly right-leaning Shachtmanites, took much longer to do so. It was probably the costliest political mistake of his life, among other results undermining any remaining influence he had over the New Left in the later 1960s. Mike never abandoned his opposition to communism as the antithesis of his own democratic socialist beliefs. But, through painful experience, he learned from King’s example that a morally consistent politics also proved, in the long run, a pragmatically sound politics. By the early 1970s, the old SP was hopelessly divided over the war in Vietnam and other issues, and in 1973, Mike and others, breaking with the right-wing Shachtmanites, created the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee (DSOC), which grew to several thousand members. Nine years later, in 1982, DSOC merged with the New American Movement (NAM), which had been founded some years earlier by former New Leftists. The new Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) represented a partial healing of old generational/political divisions.

The greatest challenge the U.S. left has faced over the years is organizational discontinuity. As once-promising movements collapse (see 1919, 1956, 1969), new generations of activists must reinvent the wheel. DSA’s major achievement has been to preserve some organizational coherence and continuity on the democratic left.DSA, it’s worth noting, was never entirely or exactly a “Harringtonite” group, and no one in the organization during Mike’s lifetime ever so described themselves. Mike did not seek nor did anyone in DSA cede him the cultish authority implied by the label. In both DSOC and DSA, robust internal debate was the norm, resulting in many of Mike’s proposals being voted down or revamped by his comrades. But if DSA had no “Harringtonites,” Mike’s leadership is still worth remembering for three reasons: (1) Mike’s commitment to building a socialist organization; (2) his commitment to creating broad independent coalitions; and (3) his commitment to communicating socialist values and proposals in accessible terms.Commitment #1: The socialist movement, Mike wrote, “is itself the embryo of socialism.” The movement has had a long history of nurturing talented speakers, writers, and organizers who sooner or later departed its ranks to achieve individual celebrity in post-socialist careers (see, for example, newspaper columnist Walter Lippmann, labor leader Walter Reuther, and sociologist Daniel Bell). After the success of The Other America, Mike could have done the same. Instead, he doubled down on his commitment to building the movement. He spoke at hundreds of gatherings every year, for free at socialist gatherings, and, when paid, often donated his speaker’s fees to the organization. Nor did he shrink from the scut-work of organization-tending, including hours and hours of not always exciting meetings.Mike was not a martyr. He enjoyed the camaraderie that came with hanging out with old comrades and new recruits. But there was a moral seriousness at the core of his lifelong devotion to the day-to-day labor of building durable and effective organizations.Commitment #2: By the 1970s, Mike identified his politics as “the left-wing of the possible.” Successful social movements, as measured in durability and influence, were those capable of winning real gains for their followers (see the labor movement of the 1930s and the civil rights movement of the 1960s). To be relevant to the everyday and pressing concerns of ordinary people, socialists had to work with those with whom they shared some common goals, but not necessarily a common vision of social transformation. For Mike, that meant building strong coalitions with the labor movement; the civil rights movement; church groups; campus groups; and the liberal wing of the Democratic Party, which (worth remembering) in the 1970s and early 1980s was still largely defined by its New Deal heritage.What this did not mean was surrendering an independent socialist perspective. Mike worked with many leading Democrats, but he was not part of or subservient to the party establishment. He criticized Democratic leaders who retreated from social justice principles when they were in power (playing a leading role in mobilizing opposition to the conservative drift of Jimmy Carter’s administration) and when they were not. In the early Reagan years, he condemned the “Democratic collapse” in the face of the right-wing Republican agenda. With the exception of the Congressional Black Caucus, he wrote in Democratic Left in the fall of 1981, “the Democratic party either stood idly by while reactionaries mounted their savage attack on social programs…or worse, joined in the destruction of gains they themselves had pioneered.” Being the left wing of the possible did not mean ceasing to be left wing.Commitment #3: In writing and speaking, Mike developed a voice that was at once passionate and persuasive. The Other America, one of the most influential works of social criticism in the 20th century, contains no overheated rhetoric, no disdainful posturing, no sanctimonious bullying of the privileged. Mike could convey moral seriousness without lapsing into moralism. His tone suggested that the reader was a reasonable person, and reasonable people, once apprised of the plight of the “Other America,” would agree on the need to find solutions.In 1989, five months before his death from cancer, Mike spoke to a February conference of the DSA Youth Section. He noted that some in the crowd would pay their dues for a year or so (“God bless you”) then move on to other things, and “probably remain, at least, a good liberal.” But to those who wound up staying for the long term, he had special words of encouragement, words as relevant today as they were then: “This movement should enrich you. This movement should allow you to lead a different kind of life. This is not a burden. At its best this is a movement of joy.” For Mike, democratic socialism was a generous, positive, and affirmative movement. May it always continue to be so.Maurice Isserman—a charter member of DSA—teaches history at Hamilton College, and is the author of The Other American: The Life of Michael Harrington (2000). This article originally appeared in the Winter 2017 issue of Democratic Left magazine.Individually signed posts do not necessarily reflect the views of North Star, of DSA as an organization or its leadership.

Now that they are in Congress, both Tlaib and Ocasio-Cortez will almost certainly develop broadened political bases largely independent of DSA. Organized labor and liberal advocacy groups will be in their camp now. The Congresswomen may, out of conviction or good will, continue to pay DSA dues, and show up for rallies, fundraisers or other socialist gatherings, as Dellums and Owens did. But it’s unlikely they’ll have the time or inclination to devote much more in terms of direct involvement. If they are going to do their jobs right, serve their constituents—and get re-elected—they are going to be very busy and in a much bigger arena.​Volunteer power from DSA, however, did help both Tlaib and, perhaps more so, Ocasio-Cortez, win their contested primaries. That involvement shows what kind of an impact the organization can have on electoral races, and will likely inspire other insurgent candidates to seek DSA’s endorsement in future races. And as more politicians begin to adopt the label of “democratic socialist”—while advancing the values and policy priorities of the group, DSA will continue to grow in power as a player in American politics.It is this growth that is more important for the organization’s continued success than discussions of strict accountability to DSA. After all, as elected representatives, Tlaib and Ocasio-Cortez are accountable to a number of different groups that helped elect them, and first and foremost—and rightly so in a democratic system—to the voters of the districts they represent. And as a matter of practicality, DSA currently needs Tlaib and Ocasio-Cortez more than either of them need DSA. This reality is worth remembering if the newly reenergized DSA is to help expand the socialist caucus in the House of Representatives beyond the two it currently counts.Maurice Isserman

Maurice Isserman, a charter member of Democratic Socialists of America, is the author of The Other American: The Life of Michael Harrington (2000)This post is dated. We intended to post it back in November, however our blog was not functioning at that time.

]]>Thu, 17 Jan 2019 21:56:40 GMThttp://www.dsanorthstar.org/blog/michael-harrington-and-harringtonisma-critical-appreciationGeorge Fish“Michael Harrington.” It’s a name that gets tossed around by members of DSA, sometimes in negative and derogatory ways. But simply put, DSA, as an organization advocating democratic (as opposed to authoritarian) socialism, that fights for free, honest and open elections for achieving socialism based on democratic self-determination and for transformative change for the here and now, is Harringtonist to its core. Harringtonism is the guiding ideology of democratic socialism in the US, and the basic set of political principles that separates DSA from the authoritarian, totalizing, and revolution-fantasy nostrums of anarchism and Marxism-Leninism.

Not that Michael Harrington was perfect. Certainly his red-baiting attack on the young radicals who were involved in the founding of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS, itself established as the youth group of the old-line social-democratic League for Industrial Democracy in 1962) was terribly flawed, and is well documented as such in Kirkpatrick Sale’s 1973 history, SDS, pp. 60-68. For them, Harrington’s harsh critique of them as being allegedly “soft on communism” smacked both of redbaiting (when they were also quite critical of Soviet-style “socialism”), as well as being hectored and lectured to as naïve children by one of their supposedly older, and thus naturally more experienced and aware, “betters.” For these young SDSers, Harrington’s direct attack was both hostile and condescending, and clearly the account given by Sale bears this out. Also flawed was his reluctant understanding that the anti-Vietnam War Movement was not some sort of “communist front” but a popular resistance: both as a Vietnamese response driven more by nationalism than Stalinism, and as a deep revulsion among the US and Western young, moved by conscience to see it as a fruitless, endlessly brutal, war against a non-Western population. Yet, Michael Harrington saw neither of this for a long while, though he later changed his mind, at least in part; his cherished ties to the centrist hawks of the then-US labor movement blinded him to this, and caused his abstention from the broad-based antiwar movement. Also erroneous was his confusing the old-line centrist union leaders of the AFL-CIO labor movement with the union rank-and-file. (Which was organized labor of the 1950s and 1960s except for the exiled Teamsters, kicked out of the AFL-CIO for corruption and criminal activities; and a handful of independent labor unions, notably the International Longshore Workers Union [ILWU] and the United Electrical Workers [UEW], which were labor pariahs regarded as “pro-communist.”) The AFL-CIO was then tightly under the autocratic rule George Meany, who’d been in power since 1955, brooked no dissent, and was a fierce foreign policy hawk. (Harrington later changed his mind on this also, and, admirably, later corrected this by helping many young activists get jobs in unions.) To be fair and honest to Michael Harrington, though, we must also acknowledge that he did come to oppose the war in Vietnam. Harrington was no knee-jerk Cold Warrior “liberal,” he was always a principled anti-Stalinist horrified at how the word “socialism” had become identified with Soviet-style authoritarianism, and knew better than to conflate anti-Stalinism with a simplistic anticommunism. This goes back to Harrington’s early days in the Independent Socialist Club under his mentor, Max Shachtman, which sided neither with the Soviet-led “peace camp” nor the US-led “democratic” camp, but always understood that Stalinist “socialism” was neither democratic nor socialist. On the issue of war and peace, had he lived Harrington would certainly have opposed US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; and stood with Bernie Sanders in calling for a “level playing field” on the issue of Israel vis-à-vis the Palestinians. But also, he would’ve opposed both Netanyahu’s chauvinism and the settlements on the West Bank as well as Hamas’s call to “drive the Jews into the sea.” He certainly also would’ve been neither naïvely pro-Assad or pro-Putin, and articulated that a mere “anti-imperialism” that translates into a knee-jerk anti-Americanism is not a principled socialist foreign policy. During the time of Michael Harington’s greatest political influence, the mid-to-late 1960s, George Meany and his acolytes controlled the AFL-CIO with an iron fist, tolerated no dissent, and even went so far as to brand delegates to the 1972 Democratic Convention who’d been elected instead of those the AFL-CIO supported as “faggots”! Openly opposing (or even subtly criticizing) hawkish, hidebound Meany and Meany-ish politics could well be a political death sentence. But Michael Harrington would’ve been proud to see the leadership of the AFL-CIO move from a Meany acolyte, Lane Kirkland, to, first, a John Sweeny, then a Richard Trumka, which moved labor politics to a more open embrace of the poor, African American and other racial minorities, women, immigrants, and others marginalized from “mainstream society;” to see rank-and-file union locals and even some national unions endorse Bernie Sanders for President; to see the emergence of dissident union caucuses such as Teamsters for a Democratic Union, the continued publication of such as In These Times,Labor Notes, and nowJacobin and a revampedDissent; and the emergence of Our Revolution, its sister affiliate Labor for Our Revolution, and the Sanders Institute. Not to mention the nationwide wave of teachers’ strikes! On the other hand, despite a noble impulse to break from the stifling “moderation” of the Eisenhower years and the confrontational Cold War politics of the post-World War II era, the young 1960s New Left’s understanding of the Cold War and the “irrelevance” of “anti-communism” certainly was naïve, and created all sorts of problems for its flagship group, SDS, in the future. When Marxist-Leninist groups actively entered it, most notably the Maoist-Stalinist Progressive Labor Party, with its student activist cadres all voting as a bloc and giving not an inch on opposing positions within SDS, SDS’s response to such “Marxism-Leninism” was for its leadership to try and prove itself more Marxist-Leninist than the Marxist-Leninists—which led the New Left of the late 1960s to not only organizationally fall apart with the demise of SDS as a mass-based movement of politically left youth in 1969, but also degenerate into Weatherman, a neo-anarchist grouping with Maoist trappings that overtly practiced confrontational violence and strategic bombing of public buildings in order to “spark the revolution;” then, in response, to the proliferation of impotent anti-Weatherman Maoist sects in the 1970s. But the better strains of the “far left,” such as some Trotskyists and the dissident Trotskyist offshoot founded by Max Shachtman (as mentioned, a direct political mentor of Michael Harrington), understood well the basic difference between socialism with democracy, and Stalinist “socialism” without it. So, despite these significant misunderstandings on the part of Harrington, later history does partially absolve him; and the founding of DSOC, and later, DSA, by Mike Harrington, and his active role in them until his death in 1989, certainly vindicates his ideas in many key ways. But one can’t say the same for the young acolytes of Weatherman and Maoism that grew out of this New Left, who not only enabled both Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan to successfully run for President by opposing what remained of the New Left, but also succeeded in defanging organized leftism in the US from the early 1970s until the early anti-globalization protests of 1999 and the early 21stCentury, leaving the political landscape without any kind of significant left presence except for one hopelessly out-of-touch, sectarian, beleaguered and marginalized. There is, indeed, an honorable socialist tradition that opposes both unregulated and repressive capitalism andthe authoritarian degeneration of “socialism” USSR-style, which made socialism synonymous with Gulag in the eyes of many people. This socialism, democratic yet positively transformative, was the acme of Michael Harrington’s socialism—and, though he’s never been a member of DSA, also informs the positive and aggressive “democratic socialism” of Bernie Sanders. Had he lived, I’m certain, Michael Harrington would’ve been proud of Bernie.Further, Michael Harrington would’ve certainly been proud that DSA has become the political home now of vital, exciting young people galvanized by Bernie Sanders and new to left politics, such as 29-year-old Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who are infusing new life into our venerable organization! Also, in articulating his political vision that led to establishing DSOC and later DSA, Harrington found himself in a minority within the Socialist Party, which not only voted against him, but changed its name to Social Democrats USA (and became defunct a few years after that), while DSOC, later DSA, continued, and now thrives since 2016. For the old Socialist Party had become a place where a hidebound, right-wing form of anticommunism had taken over in place of a principled anti-Stalinism; where once self-professed socialists were often to the right of liberals and the Democratic Party on even domestic issues; and where members of the Socialist Party then, such as Jeanne Kirkpatrick, former Ambassador to the UN under Reagan, became neoconservative hawks echoing Republican talking points on the Cold War, even in the face of Gorbachev.Also, Michael Harrington made all the “right” (in both meanings of the word) enemies—from William F. Buckley, Jr. to Irving Kristol, former anticommunist right-wing social-democrat editor of the New Leader“moderate” political magazine turned self-professed “neoconservative,” who had trouble precisely with the status quo because it had become “liberal”! And to having his politics disavowed by such as the “Senator from Boeing,” Henry “Scoop” Jackson, arch-Cold Warrior Senator from the State of Washington, where Boeing was a major employer! This, too, is part of the legacy of Michael Harrington and Harringtonism. Michael Harrington was also correct in seeing the locus for socialist struggle within the Democratic Party, and constituting DSA as the left wing of the Democratic Party, rather than chasing the political will-o’-the-wisp through “anti-capitalist” third parties, which have proved themselves electorally irrelevant, and sometimes even bizarre. (Consider the Green Party candidate in the 2018 Ohio election who claimed to be descended from space aliens!) Bernie Sanders’s successful campaign for President in 2015 and 2016 running as a Democrat certainly vindicates Harrington on this. Michael Harrington was, furthermore, a prolific writer who had direct impact on progressive US domestic policy (e.g., Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty), and through many books, starting with 1962’s The Other America--whichexposed the vast extent of poverty still prevalent in the US’s “affluent society”—thus laid out a compelling vision for an up-to-date democratic socialism; in terms of practical politics, Harrington’s vision directly inspired aspects of both Kennedy’s New Frontier and Johnson’s Great Society . While we who are veterans of DSA may agree or disagree with parts of it, such as his knee-jerk (but understandable for the time) anticommunism, or for his lack of perception in how limited the results of the New Frontier or the Great Society would be (again, understandable for the times he was in), there is no questioning that, as DSA members, we still follow in the vein he laid out: we seriously engage in electoral politics, we wish to transform the US in the here and now, and we wish to reach out to ordinary working people, not just preach to the already-converted left choir. As DSAers and North Star caucus members, we are all united on these three essential points—which is integral to Michael Harrington’s understanding of the tasks of the US left to above all, “speak American” and be “the left wing of the feasible.” While DSA members do have differing assessments of Michael Harrington and what constitutes Harringtonism, we should certainly agree that what Harrington promulgated in the name of socialism differs fundamentally from both Marxism-Leninism and anarchism. But DSA does have a specific understanding of socialism that is not only rooted in the political vision of Michael Harrington, it also separates DSA organizationally from the Marxist-Leninist (or Leninist-Trotskyist) or anarchist tendencies that have shaped left politics in very sectarian and unattractive ways.Such is the legacy of Michael Harrington and Harringtonism, a legacy that, despite its faults and shortcomings, has also demonstrated its positive, constructive side.

Biographical note: George Fish is an At-Large member of DSA living in Indianapolis, Indiana, an extensively-published left/socialist writer and poet, and a rank-and-file member of UFCW Local 700. Ed. note.Here is Michael Harrington describing his views in 1978.

1) How should the left approach the 2020 elections? Here are my thoughts. The paramount objective must be the defeat of Trump & the retaking of the Senate from GOP. This is the ‘prize’ on which we must keep our eyes.

2) If we do not win this ‘prize,’ the elections will be catastrophic for American democracy, those targeted by Trump’s authoritarian populism & the left. But much of the discussion on left twitter and facebook takes place within a political vacuum, as if context was irrelevant.

3) There will be a vigorous campaign over which presidential candidate would be the best standard bearer in that all important battle. But the very breadth of the current field means that there are many authentic progressives who are credible prospects.

4) Rather than rush to anoint a particular candidate as the one and only prospect, it makes much more sense for the left, at this early point in the campaign for an election two years down the road, to be focused on promoting issues that it wants the Democratic Party and whomever is the candidate to embrace.

5) Alexandra Ocasio Cortez’s ability to put the #GreenNewDeal on the agenda before she was even sworn in illustrates what the democratic left can – and should be – doing to advance an agenda that will address critical issues such as climate change and economic inequality & set the stage for 2020.

6) By contrast, the rush to focus on a particular candidate plays into narrow conception of elections, focused on personalities to the exclusion of program. And insofar as it takes the form of insisting that the personality can only be a self-avowed democratic socialist, it becomes an exercise in sectarian purity.

7) Nothing would be more damaging to the development of democratic socialism as a political force that can seriously contest for political power in the US than the loss of 2020 elections, with the sense that democratic socialists harmed Trump’s opponent and sat on the sidelines in a critical struggle.

8) Insofar as some on the left feel that it is absolutely essential to weigh in behind a particular candidate, it is critical that this intervention take a positive form, providing reasons to support their preferred choice, and not a negative campaign against others.

9) Negative campaigns against progressive candidates are worse than a zero sum game: they damage both the target and the intended beneficiary. If a candidate wins by such means, it becomes all that more difficult to unify the supporters of others for the critical general election.

10) The consequence of negative campaigns among progressives, based on dubious logic that they are competing for same votes, is that pro-business ‘moderates’ would be advantaged in campaign to win the nomination.

11) Attacks on Elizabeth Warren in the name of support for Bernie Sanders, such as that conducted by Jacobin editor Bhaskar Sunkara, are illustrative of precisely what those of the left should NOT be doing. Such tactics will hurt both Warren and Sanders, to the benefit of those to their right.

12) Above all else, a left approach to the 2020 elections must never lose sight of the ‘prize’: the defeat of Trump, the GOP and the racist, authoritarian populism they have brought into the mainstream of American politics.

By Max Sawicky Ferment inspired by the execrable Trump presidency and Republican Congress has returned Democrats to a majority in the House of Representatives, but their incoming leader, Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), is maneuvering to squelch that ferment with a new “rules package” that will discourage progressive legislation.The two moves in question are reinstituting a “PAY-GO” restriction on legislation, and neutering a new committee dedicated to advancing the Green New Deal (GND).PAY-GO, short for “pay-as-you-go,” requires any proposal for new spending or tax cuts to be accompanied by offsetting measures that preclude any increase in the federal budget deficit over the ensuing decade. Under this rule, a bill violating this requirement is subject to a “point of order” on the House floor. That immediately interrupts consideration of the bill, which can then be killed absent consent by the Democratic leadership, meaning Nancy. It is possible for the restriction to be waived, but that would require buy-in from you guessed it, Nancy, so it will be her way or no way.In practice, of course, a speaker who has the support of her caucus has dictatorial control over the House. She or her can block any bill at any time. What PAY-GO does is give Pelosi an excuse for letting something die before it has a chance to get a vote by the full House. Her fingerprints on the blockage are not as obvious. Instead of the headline being, “Nancy says she doesn’t like this bill,” it will be, “Green New Deal falls afoul of PAY-GO rules.” Meanwhile, the new committee dedicated to advancing the GND, besides being hampered by PAY-GO, would lack subpoena power. So compared to other Congressional committees, it will be like the kids’ table at Thanksgiving.Why, oh why, would the great San Francisco liberal be doing this? A few possibilities come to mind.The worst is that she is committed to the same nostrums of fiscal responsibility that have helped the Democrats lose political battles since Walter Mondale in 1984. If you’re old, you may remember Mondale’s bold announcement in his presidential campaign that he would raise taxes to fix the deficit. That November, he lost 49 states to the addled Ronald Reagan. In 1993, new president Bill Clinton rammed through a deficit-reduction-minded budget deal that was followed in 1994 by Democrats losing both the Senate and the House, the latter for the first time in forty years. In 2010, Barack Obama promoted a health care reform that, out of deficit concerns, was insufficiently funded, among other deficiencies, resulting in a plethora of difficulties in operation of the new law, and some impact on flipping the Congress to the Republicans. There’s a pattern here.The wonder about mainstream Democratic affection for PAY-GO is that the deficit fears upon which it is premised are no longer subscribed to by Democratic economists, even relatively moderate ones such as Larry Summers, Obama’s chief economic adviser, or Jason Furman, head of Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers. Summers has written of his worries that the economy is in a long-term rut of “secular stagnation.” Furman recently acknowledged in the Wall Street Journalthat deficits resulting from Trump’s tax cut had a positive boost for the economy, albeit limited and temporary.There is a reasonable case for higher deficits even now with a low unemployment rate (and many remaining labor market drop-outs). Moreover, there is no reason to expect current conditions to persist for a full decade. In particular, policies that strengthen the “automatic stabilizers” in the budget (i.e., those that automatically increase spending and cut taxes when the economy slows down) would be beneficial for the long term.As a general matter, it makes sense to finance infrastructure — investments that provided benefits over an extended period of time — with borrowed money, as business firms often do. Defraying the interest on such debt is the real pay-as-you-go. Denying such investment is just cutting your nose to spite your face.We might also linger on the thought that a reduced national debt would not be much consolation after the advent of irreversible, catastrophic climate change. Investment will be one of the pillars of addressing this threat.Deficit reduction politics by now should be recognized as a gigantic loser for Democrats. Republicans are never constrained by deficit impacts in any of their proposals. Either they are ignored, or measures like the Trump tax cut are magically transformed into deficit-reducing miracles.On the Democratic side, any “fully-funded” spending bill provides opponents of the bill with a nice array of groups negatively affected by the offsets upon which to base a counter-mobilization. Knowledge of the PAY-GO obstacle will strangle potential progressive initiatives in the crib.Nancy’s rules are probably designed to restrain the energized progressive contingent of House Democrats. She’s smart, after all; she can’t be unaware of the impact of her rules. However effective she was in mobilizing her caucus behind Obama’s initiatives in 2008 and 2009, her vision of political possibilities does not seemed to have evolved with the times. She reminds us of defeated Senator Claire McCaskill, who wondered how someone like Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez had become “the new, shiny object.” Something is happening and she don’t know what it is.One rationale for stifling discussion of social legislation is to keep the spotlight on toppling Trump. While there is no reason not to unleash the full fire and fury of the House majority on our vicious, kleptocratic administration, there is a pragmatic reason to maintain attention on the issues that arguably flipped the House: meat and potatoes stuff like health care, the minimum wage, etc.It is true that no progressive initiative is likely to make it through the Republican Senate, much less Trump’s White House, but that’s the cynic’s view. Proposing hopeless initiatives is the beginning of providing some hope for them. Republicans seem to understand that better than Democrats.It’s always possible that the commitment to PAY-GO, like most other decisions, is more an artifact of what wealthy donors have indicated they prefer, rather than ordinary voters. Or as Nancy says, “We’re capitalists, and that’s just the way it is.”​Reposted from Jacobin blog with the permission of the author. Max B. Sawicky is an economist and writer living in Virginia. He has worked at the Government Accountability Office and the Economic Policy Institute.Ed note; Congresswoman Alexandria Acosio-Cortez was one of 3 Democrats to vote to oppose the Pay-Go rule.